You love to walk the forgotten roads,
the ones with weedy, overgrown shoulders
and missing road signs,
orphaned roads
that let you turn down the volume
on the clatter and chatter,
feel the earth under your feet
and watch cloud shapes coalesce above.
Forgotten roads
let you take time
to remember
your name.
They don't hurry you
to get anywhere;
they honor you
right where you are.
Even as the milky clouds
grow ashen and somber,
you walk.
You walk
as raindrops tease,
then course down in a cavalry of wet.
In the petrichor
you smell the birth of another chance
and feel yourself
cleansed of artifice,
shining like a new penny
on the asphalt.
